NEW DELHI: Three months
after it lost 76 men in an ambush by Maoists, the CRPF suffered another
massive loss in Bastar: 26 of its men were killed when the Maoists attacked
a road opening party in Narayanpur district.

In the third major Naxal
attack in Chhattisgarh in the last three months, at least 26 security forces
personnel — the bulk of them from the CRPF — were killed in an ambush near
Dhaudhai, 32 km from the district headquarters of Narayanpur in South Bastar
today.

Twenty-four of the dead
were from the CRPF and one from the Chhattisgarh police. One special police
officer (SPO) was killed. Fifteen security personnel were injured in the
ambush — that took place at around 3.30 pm — and the over-three-and-a-half-hour
encounter that followed.

State Home Minister Nankiram
Kanwar confirmed 15 deaths and indicated there could be more casualities.
CRPF sources put the toll at 26, but added a final number could emerge
only after search and rescue operations were completed later in the night.
Progress of search and rescue was slow, especially after sunset, with the
danger of landmine attacks looming.

Police sources said the
Maoists first ambushed a road-opening party ahead of a larger team of CRPF,
state police Special Task Force and SPOs, and then the other personnel
near the Meherbada nullah.

A senior police officer
said over a 100 Maoists, including ‘sangam’ members or village-level supporters,
were likely to have been involved in the attack. Sources in New Delhi said
the security personnel team had 63 men, who were returning to their base
after an administrative and logistics exchange with another company at
Paraspur.

It appears that the Maoists
had prior information about the movement of the team; there was, however,
no intelligence on the ambush. The Maoists are likely to have taken away
some arms, sources in Delhi said.

A senior police officer
in Chhattisgarh said the attack signals a change in the strategy of the
Maoists who normally prefer to lie low during the rainy season. He said
that Army helicopters had lifted the injured to hospital. At least 13 injured
personnel were treated at Dhaudhai hospital.

On April 6, 75 CRPF personnel
were killed in Dantewada. In May, Naxals blew up a passenger bus in which
SPOs were travelling, killing 33 people including civilians. On July 12
last year, the Naxals had killed Rajnandgaon district superintendent of
police V K Choubey and 32 others in an ambush at Madanwada.